This American Life

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Top Ten Videos of 2010: 10. Improv Everywhere, “Ted’s Birthday”

December 28, 2010 | 2 comments

improveverywhere

Photo:
Scott Beale/Laughingsquid

It’s that time again. In fact, it’s past that time again — I would have liked to have started this year’s list of my favorite video clips earlier in December, like I did last year. I like revealing them countdown-style at a rate of one per day, and the 2009 list was fully unspooled before the New Year.

But that was then. I’ve been busier this year, which is a good thing for me, but not as good for this blog. Nevertheless, if you are one of the millions1 of blog viewers who have been waiting with bated breath for the Second Annual Cheek and Bluster Derek’s Ten Favorite Videos List (or CABDTFVL for short2), your breath need no longer be bated. Let’s kick this mutha off.

The producers of my number ten video, Improv Everywhere, didn’t exactly burst onto the scene in 2010. They’ve had a large following for several years now, particularly since they were featured in a popular 2005 episode of This American Life on NPR. Most of my favorite bits of public theatre they’ve pulled off (links at the end of this post) happened in prior years, with the videos of each posted soon afterward. Fortunately, in late February of 2010 they posted a particularly good rendition of one of their tried-and-true “missions” — a little something called “Ted’s Birthday.”

Improv Everywhere’s website is, simply enough, http://improveverywhere.com. Their very entertaining YouTube channel is here. Among my favorites are their videos “I Love Lunch! The Musical,” “Look Up More,” and “Surprise Wedding Reception.”


David Lynch and the Fallacy of Answering

February 26, 2007 | 3 comments

I was just listening to an episode of the reliably interesting radio show This American Life called “Quiz Show.” The second of the episode’s three segments was about the MIT Mystery Hunt, an annual event where teams of intimidatingly brainy puzzle geeks race each other to the solution of a puzzle concocted by the previous year’s winning team. The following passage about what the reporter calls “‘A-ha!’ moments” traveled the boomerang path of irony to cause me an “A-ha!” moment of my own:

Are absolute Answers a human construct, while the underlying Truth in nature is not knowable in such terms? I was immediately reminded of the works of filmmaker David Lynch, in particular his briefly brilliant TV series Twin Peaks, which aired in the early 1990′s.

TwinPeaks

A typically atypical Twin Peaks scene.

As many will recall, the plot of the show concerned the question of who killed Laura Palmer, the high school homecoming queen in an obscure northwestern logging town. The ABC network promoted Peaks by following the “Who Shot J.R.?” paradigm, and did so quite effectively – at the outset. Lynch was in no great hurry to resolve the Laura Palmer case, sticking instead to his own distinctive style: Read the rest of this entry »